Drawing from yur own expirience- can you recall any specific example of effective management and mismanagement
I do have an example of mismanagement:
I work with a manager who is tyrannical. The only time he enter acts with the team members is to order them to get something done or to reprimand them for not doing something. I work in an industrial setting and my boss is upper management for the plant. He has several middle managers under him that should handle day to day problems and such. The upper manager (lets call him Bob), refuses to praise any hard work because that is what the hourlies are getting a paycheck for – working hard.
Bob will not even take the time to greet an hourly when he passes them in the hallway – he is WAY too busy to talk ever.
I could go on for days about this, but the results of this dictatorship is the reason for writing this – we are losing about 60% to 70% of our hourlies annually.
If you did the exact oppisite of Bob then you would become a great leader of people.
March 7th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
I do have an example of mismanagement:
I work with a manager who is tyrannical. The only time he enter acts with the team members is to order them to get something done or to reprimand them for not doing something. I work in an industrial setting and my boss is upper management for the plant. He has several middle managers under him that should handle day to day problems and such. The upper manager (lets call him Bob), refuses to praise any hard work because that is what the hourlies are getting a paycheck for – working hard.
Bob will not even take the time to greet an hourly when he passes them in the hallway – he is WAY too busy to talk ever.
I could go on for days about this, but the results of this dictatorship is the reason for writing this – we are losing about 60% to 70% of our hourlies annually.
If you did the exact oppisite of Bob then you would become a great leader of people.
References :
March 7th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
I had a good boss and a bad boss… and a lot of in-between bosses.
I’ll give one example of the good and the bad.
The bad boss was insecure and ruled by intimidation and always strived to make himself look good, even at the expense of his employees. In a real-life scenario, I had to select a vendor to win a large bid at our company. Both of the two finalists were established partners with us already, and were neck-and-neck from a service standpoint. The product that they would deliver would be virtually identical, so it was all boiling down to price. There were about 15 pieces of the price puzzle, and when it all sorted out, Vendor A was going to save us about $50,000 per year. I presented my findings to my boss, and we called a meeting with the different area managers to present our recommendations. I presented my findings to all of these managers and directors, only to have my boss contradict me at the last minute, in front of everyone, because of some information he had received and not shared with me. He made me look stupid in front of everyone just so he could look like he knew more, and could save the company money.
The good boss was a Vice President in charge of a large group of managers and directors at another company I worked at. I was one of the managers, and he had meetings every other Friday morning with all of his direct reports. At one such meeting, he handed each of us a list of all of our employees. Before the next meeting we all had to identify what motivated each of these people other than money. I learned a lot about my staff through that exercise, and when I started treating everyone differently because of it, I saw an immediate improvement in productivity and morale. Some of my staff were motivated by being given challenging things to work on. Some of my staff needed approval and a pat on the back for completing a task. Some of my staff really worked well when given public praise. Still others needed to know that I understood how hard they worked, and as soon as I took the time to talk through it with them, I found they were able to work even harder.
The bad boss made me want a new job. The good boss made me stay at a company for over 11 years, and follow him to a new company when he left.
References :
March 7th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Where do I start? I don’t think I have room enough in this little box! lol
But for specifics…effective management…..
I had a supervisor who ensured that everyone learned the most basic of departmental tasks and procedures to ensure that it ran smoothly even if a member was absent. This person was diplomatic, and made choices based on the good of their department along with the good of the company. You never wondered what they meant by their instructions and expectations, they made them clear.
Mismanagement….several examples here.
A boss who fears upper management, so she blows off any verbal harrassment of her employees by other departments. Yells and gets upset rather than looking for solutions. Puts people down loudly where all can hear. Refuses to learn anything about how to run the department….instead relying solely on those around her. For this reason….after I left, she kept e-mailing me asking me how to do things.
Another example, had a boss who literally did nothing all day long. He once was caught tapping away on his keyboard with no programs pulled up….just the desktop. Even stupider, his screen was visible by all those that walked by, so you could tell he was doing nothing. He also refused to learn some of the most basic stuff…and when I left he could do none of the market research. I was the only one in the company who knew how to use the program.
And for the overall bigger picture, look at these two managers. We can blame them all day long, but who are their supervisors…and their supervisors’ bosses? Mismanagement tends to work its way down from the top. If it doesn’t work at the top, it most likely will crumble down.
References :